Tag Archives: Emergency

Coincidentally enough, today is my birthday. What better day than today to reminisce on a previous birthday experience.

Today I am turning 12: Finally my parents are giving me new responsibilities and I’m kind of starting to feel like a real grown up. All I have wanted all year is a laptop of my own just like my big brothers. After all, isn’t it fair that we are all given the same things? I’m 12, I think I deserve the world…

I wake up and can’t even make it until the end of the day to open my present from my parents because I know exactly what it is! I convince them to let me open it immediately. My eyes have never fallen in love so quickly with anything before. It’s a beautiful, shiny, blemish-free, Acer laptop. A bit big (17”) but who cares, it’s a computer of my own. I run to my room and begin exploring the alternative world of the… INTERNET! I think I must have visited every single website known to man in a matter of two hours. When all of a sudden…. It stops working? What has just happened to me? What Gods from above are out to get me today?

I run down to my father to complain about my defective machine that he had just given to me. Of course the real problem is that the computer had a virus, which was probably my own fault for being reckless. I did not admit to it though. I continued to blame the product for being defective. Being the bratty 12 year old I was, (and probably still am) I demanded they return it right away and get me one that worked. This was back when Comp USA was still around, so my determined parents drove almost an hour down to the store to demand I receive a functioning computer.

I am home waiting eagerly with my brother, praying their return is quick so I can pick up where I left off exploring the cosmos of the inter-web. Hours pass and still I have not heard from them. Until all of a sudden everything begins to move at warp speed and every thought of my laptop has been pushed to the back of my mind. My father races through our front door to grab something for my mother and tells us there has been an emergency. He tells my brother to keep an eye on myself and the house while he goes to the hospital with my mum, but does not tell us anymore. We look out our front window and my mom is in the drivers seat of her car with firefighters and EMTs pulling her out because she was in so much pain she could not move.

We finally hear from my parents hours later to let us know my mum is doing well and she was recovering from a very severe gallbladder attack. They profusely apologized for ruining my birthday, which never even crossed my mind. My brother and I quietly celebrated ourselves that night, with my new computer.